Eye Contact

by Michael Craft

  At first I just stuffed the résumés into my briefcase, but the collection thickened to the point where I had to dump it on the kitchen counter at home one evening. Neil and I had no plans that night, so we spent a couple of hours together sorting through the applications, commenting on likely candidates while sipping a cocktail or two.

  “Wow,” he said. “Guess who wants to move to Dumont with you.”

  I looked up from the cover letter I was reading. “Who?”

  He passed the papers across the kitchen island. “Lucille Haring.”

  Sure enough, the letter, the resume, the supporting documents—all crisply laser printed on heavy white Strathmore—were hers. Lucille Haring worked upstairs at the Journal in the publisher’s office, a computer specialist with a military background and a stiff, efficient manner to match. While I was immersed in my investigation of the festival conspiracy last summer, she provided me with key information that helped crack the story. I also learned that she was a lesbian, a guarded aspect of her private life that she had kept well removed from the job.

  “Lucy?” I mused aloud. “Gordon says he finds her indispensable, which surprises me—he’s such an affable sort of backslapper, and she, well … isn’t. But I have to admit that she’s smart, dedicated, and no-nonsense. If she feels she could handle the Dumont job, she’d probably make a hell of an editor.” I fell silent.

  Neil prompted me, “But …”

  “But I’d hate to raid Gordon’s staff. I mean, he’s already losing me.”

  “He’ll live,” Neil reminded me, smirking.

  I laughed, putting Lucy’s application aside, tucking it back in my briefcase for future consideration. I swirled the ice in my empty glass, asking Neil, “Another?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll get it.” He rose from the stool where he sat, picked up both glasses, and crossed the kitchen to the refrigerator, saying over his shoulder, “We’d better plan to eat soon, or we’ll be smashed—on a weeknight, no less.”

  “God forbid.” Absentmindedly, I opened the next envelope and skimmed the cover letter. Intrigued, I read it again in detail, then flipped to the résumé and studied it. “Hmm.”

  “Who is it?” asked Neil, setting down my glass, snooping over my shoulder.

  “Someone named Parker Trent.”

  Neil shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

  “Me neither, but he has nearly thirty years’ experience with credentials as a hardworking editor at lots of papers, large and small.”

  “Sounds kind of old,” Neil said under his breath. With curiosity slaked, he returned to the far side of the island, preparing to dig deeper into the slushpile of applications.

  “He’s fifty-one,” I admonished Neil, reminding him, “only nine years older than yours truly.”

  “Whatever. If this guy’s so hot, why has he moved around so much?”

  A reasonable question. “He says he’s been in search of the perfect position. He wants to ‘make a difference.’ And get this: he’s currently managing editor of the Milwaukee Triangle.”

  Neil’s brows rose reflexively. “The gay paper?”

  “Yeah.” I passed Parker Trent’s material across the counter, and Neil began perusing it. I continued. “The Triangle is one of the best gay weeklies around, known for its solid reporting as well as its tough stance on gay issues. This guy’s at least partly responsible for that reputation.”

  Impressed, Neil acknowledged, “He writes a good letter. Listen: ‘I can think of no more rewarding career move than to work at the side of Mark Manning, helping to shape the Register into a top-notch daily.’ Pretty smooth. Does he jump to the top of your interview list?”

  “With any luck, he’ll be the only interview. He’s qualified, he’s nearby, he wants to work with me—and he’s gay.”

  Neil beaded me with a stare. “Remember now. No casting-couch antics.”

  “Hardly,” I assured him. “Even if the thought crossed my mind, I wouldn’t get far with you in the room.”

  “Me?” Neil looked up from sipping his vodka. “Why would I be in the room?”

  “Because I insist. Whoever ends up as my managing editor will be working with me on a daily basis, sometimes day and night. It’s bad enough that you and I will be spending our weeks apart—I certainly don’t want to burden you with ‘casting-couch’ suspicions. So I won’t hire anyone without your approval.”

  Neil sucked an ice cube into his mouth and rolled his tongue around it. Dropping it back into the glass, he grinned, telling me, “This interview process may take longer than you think.”

  The process began that Saturday. I had phoned Parker Trent the day after reading his application, and he was eager to meet with me. Milwaukee is an easy two-hour drive from Chicago, and he offered to make the trip that weekend. So I suggested that we meet at the loft late on Saturday afternoon. Neil would be there, as I wanted, and if the meeting went well, I could suggest that we all go to dinner together.

  That day the city basked in perfect autumn weather. The loft’s eastern wall of windows framed a spectacular lakescape under cumulus clouds like mountains of froth in some trompe l’oeil fantasy. Overhead, the room’s skylights admitted brilliant shafts of light that played against the interior surfaces, heightening the sculptural quality of Neil’s design of the space. Within these great oblique beams, motes of dust silently danced.

  “This place is a mess,” Neil fretted while spritzing a table with Endust.

  In fact, the place was immaculate, and I couldn’t help laughing. “He’s supposed to impress us, remember.”

  Neil glanced about. “Well, we don’t want him to think we live like pigs.”

  Dryly, I told Neil, “I doubt that he’ll draw that conclusion.” While setting my notepad on a table near the sofa, I checked my watch. Nearly four—Parker Trent should arrive soon.

  Stowing his cleaning paraphernalia in a cupboard, Neil asked, “When you talked to him, what did he sound like? I mean, cute?”

  We both knew that his question was ridiculous, but I had to admit that I, too, had been wondering what Parker Trent would look like. He had enclosed no photo with his résumé, forcing me to ponder whether this signaled political correctness, true professionalism—or a wizened old mug. I answered Neil, “He sounded … nice enough. You’ll have to judge for yourself whether he’s ‘cute.’ But remember, he’s fifty-one.”

  This speculation was ended by the sound of the door buzzer. Glancing at my watch, I told Neil, “He’s on the dot—I like that.” Then I buzzed him up.

  Neil followed me to the door, where we waited the half-minute that it took Parker Trent to come up from the lobby. When he rapped on the door, I opened it.

  “Well, hello,” he said, smiling, surprised to find two of us waiting for him. He looked from my face, to Neil’s, then back at me.

  “Hello, Parker,” I told him, extending my hand. Though we’d talked at length on the phone, I recited the ritual of introducing myself.

  “It’s a pleasure, Mark, an honor,” he told me, shaking hands; in his left hand he carried a portfolio, which undoubtedly contained samples of his work. “I’ve long wanted to meet you.”

  I turned. “This is Neil Waite, my lover.” As they shook hands, I explained, “Neil is an architect, and all of this”—I gestured toward the expansive interior of the loft—“is the product of his talents.”

  Parker gazed into the apartment, telling us, “It’s sensational. Congratulations to both of you. Your success and, I presume, happiness is a rousing model for the gay community.”

  Neil chuckled. “That’s a bit thick, Parker, but thanks. Hey—come on in.” And he ushered Parker into the room, closing the door behind him.

  I suggested that we move to the sofa and chairs that were grouped by the big window, and as Parker walked toward the center of the room, I had the chance to get a good look at him.

  He stood about my height (not quite six feet), with a lean, trim body. His hair thinned a bit at the crown,
but otherwise it was thick and wavy with handsome dashes of silver. A neat, short beard framed the features of his face, giving him an ageless air. He looked believably fifty and fit, or believably thirty, like an actor playing a role. His clothes made no particular fashion statement—khaki slacks, oxford shirt, a nice vest—but they were right for the weather, right for this casual meeting at home, and exactly right for the man who wore them. Most striking, though, his style of movement was youthful, loping, and self-assured, a body language that was uniquely his and unforgettable.

  Equally unforgettable (and there is no genteel way to relate this), he strutted a simply fabulous ass. As he leaned in front of the sofa to place his portfolio on the coffee table, I was treated to a full, unobstructed view of his muscular, khaki-clad butt, a sight that actually made me gasp. Parker didn’t hear me—he was saying something at that moment, God knows what—but Neil picked up on my reaction, and, in fact, he shared it, mouthing an exaggerated, silent Wow!

  My mind was in a momentary spin, caused not only by the unexpected, delightful display of Parker Trent’s posterior, but also by a memory that it triggered. Many years earlier, when I was a mere boy, at the very onset of my sexual awakening, I had experienced a similar rush upon viewing a similar sight. In a boy of nine, these new feelings were confusing and a bit frightening, but, most of all, thrilling. It had happened at Christmastime, during my first visit to Dumont. In the Chicago loft with Parker and Neil on that Saturday afternoon last fall, Dumont was very much in the back of my mind. I was planning the career move that would take me there. Clearly, it was my subliminal preoccupation with Dumont that fired my powerful response to Parker’s physique.

  Parker said, “I’ve brought along some tear sheets of my better work—editorials, extended series, special features. Ultimately, the work itself will tell you more about my background than a resume can.” He unzipped the portfolio, flopped its cover open, and began sorting through a pile of full-page newspaper samples, handing them to Neil and me.

  Sitting in a cluster around the coffee table, we began a quiet discourse of the various samples, Parker explaining the background of each project, Neil and I voicing our approval. While Neil was more interested in the design of the pages, I focused on their content and the solid research that backed each story. We both agreed that all of it was first-rate, and I grew steadily more convinced that Parker would make an outstanding managing editor for the Dumont Daily Register.

  When Parker finished with one stack of pages and prepared to make room for another, Neil rose, offering to get us drinks. Parker asked for juice or tea, and I had no taste for alcohol yet—it was still before five—so Neil stepped away to the kitchen, promising to concoct some sort of herbal infusion that he felt would suit the autumn afternoon.

  Parker and I thanked him; then Parker turned to ask me, “May I bore you with some more of my samples?”

  “I’m not the least bit bored,” I assured him. “What else have you got?”

  The coffee table was by now covered with the sheets of newsprint. “Let’s see,” he said, “somewhere here I’ve got a three-part series on a funding controversy at an upstate AIDS clinic. I didn’t do the actual reporting, but I dreamed it up, assigned it, and provided the hard research. I’m proud of it, Mark. I think you’ll agree that it’s good, solid journalism. Ah—here we are.”

  He made a clearing on the table and spread the funding series before me. As I leaned forward to study it, he gathered together the various pages I had already reviewed and glanced about for somewhere to put them, mentioning, “Let me get these out of the way.” Vacantly, I told him, “Anywhere’s fine,” already engrossed in my reading. With one knee on the floor, he picked the stack of clippings off the table and reached away to place them on the carpet, bending away from me, his rump aimed squarely in my direction.

  That broke my train of thought. I found it difficult to continue reading—hell, I couldn’t even focus on the type. Instead, my eyes were again glued to Parker Trent’s beautiful khaki ass. The sight of him kneeling there, bending over, with those sharp creases running up the back of his thighs, reminded me of my boyhood visit to Dumont.

  My mind spun back thirty-three years. It was several days before Christmas when my adventure began. I was nine and alone, bundled up and packed onto a northbound bus, laden with gifts for my as-yet-unmet extended family, including several pounds of margarine for Aunt Peggy, who had a heart condition. Mom had stuck some cheap self-adhesive bows on the waxy cartons, explaining, “They make so much butter in Wisconsin, margarine is actually illegal up there. You can be a real hero by smuggling these in for her.”

  The bus ride took most of the day, as I traveled a few hundred miles from my Illinois home into Wisconsin, headed for a town called Dumont. Though the weather at home was cold, it hadn’t snowed yet, so I was anxious to set foot in the faraway land where I assumed all Christmases were white. As the long afternoon shadows grew darker around our bus, the driver announced that we had arrived, and I was disappointed to see that the ground was still green. I had presumed that Dumont was nestled somewhere in the great north woods, a mere clearing in the pines, but it turned out to be a substantial little city, larger than my own hometown. And though there were plenty of trees, they did not, even collectively, constitute a woods—certainly not the primeval forest that had rooted in my mind.

  At the bus stop, I was the only child to get off the Greyhound, so my uncle easily spotted me in the crowd. “Mark,” he said, rushing forward and squatting to hug me, “I’m your uncle Edwin, your mother’s brother. Welcome to Dumont.”

  In the car, he told me how anxious my aunt Peggy was to meet me. She was at home helping the housekeeper with dinner. (Mom had told me that her name was Hazel—right! The real Hazel wouldn’t need help fixing supper.) “The kids,” Suzanne and Joey Quatrain, were dying to show me around (I’ll bet). And the older son, Mark (same first name as mine), wouldn’t be home from college till tomorrow. Uncle Edwin did most of the talking, as if he could fill me in on a lifetime of missing details during the short ride from the bus station. He mentioned his printing business, “the new plant,” and I remembered Mom’s frequent comment that our family must have printer’s ink in its blood.

  The car was a real beauty, imported, which was something of an oddity back then. I found the strange controls on the wood-inlaid dashboard far more engrossing than my uncle’s chatter. “Here we are,” he said at last, turning onto Prairie Street. And then I saw it.

  Big and brick, square and stately, it looked more like a bank than a house, conspicuous among its fancy-gabled neighbors. Its clean, strong lines rose from the earth and shot three stories high, topping the giant elms that edged the street. The pitch of the roof was so shallow that it appeared flat, overhanging the walls with broad, shading eaves. Though the house was more than twice my age, its many windows gave it a modern airiness that belied its structural heft. The most prominent of these windows was a half-circle of glass on the third floor, like a mammoth eye peering out from under the eaves.

  My uncle laughed at my awed reaction to the house, mentioning a famous architect who ran a school in Wisconsin. One of the students had designed this house, and everybody got all gushy once when the head architect paid a visit and said he “liked” it. (Big deal!)

  We entered through the heavy front door, and I was met by the entire household, who fluttered around me with such excitement, you’d think they never had company. Aunt Peggy was nice, but a little stiff; I was expecting someone more like Mom. She thanked me for the margarine, saying, “That’s very thoughtful, dear,” then handed it to Hazel, who held the stuff as though it might explode. Hazel wasn’t anything like the maid on TV. She was not plump, she did not have red hair, she wore thick glasses, and she had a husband, Hank Healy, who was the handyman around the house (too bad he didn’t have any snow to shovel).

  As for “the kids,” Suzanne, an eighth grader, was pretty and friendly, but sort of stuck-up, the way girls get when t
hey’re set for high school. I knew right away that we wouldn’t be spending much time together. Joey, on the other hand, was ready to be my new best friend, at least for a week. A fifth grader, he was a year older than I was, but shorter, which evened the score. From the way he darted around, snatched at gifts, and generally caused a commotion, he seemed younger than me. He would do as a companion for the length of my visit, but he really wasn’t my type. Not that he was dirty or anything, but he seemed, well … messy.

  They all showed me through the house, which was so big that I often felt lost. Downstairs were all the rooms you’d expect—living room, dining room, kitchen, and kind of a den-place for Uncle Edwin. The furniture was woody and expensive, and the Christmas tree in the front hall looked department-store-perfect. A big open staircase led to the second floor, where there were mostly bedrooms, including my guest room, which was nice. There was a second stairway at the back of the house leading down to the kitchen and up to the third floor. No one offered to take me up there, so I assumed it wasn’t used much, like an attic. But then I remembered that big window and wondered if maybe it was a ballroom or something. As we began heading down the stairway to the kitchen, I turned and asked, “What’s upstairs?”

  Everyone stopped in their tracks. Uncle Edwin cleared his throat and told me, “Just extra space. We don’t use it anymore. You can have a look sometime if you like.” Joey didn’t need any prompting: “I’ll show it to you. It’s neat up there.” Aunt Peggy said, “Tomorrow, dear.” Then we all went downstairs.

  Next day, my oldest cousin, Mark, returned from college. A freshman, he had never really been away from home before, so it was a big deal when he arrived. Mark was very handsome, with wavy brown hair, and I could tell that Suzanne was jealous of all the attention he got. He wore tan pants, like soldiers wear, and I thought they looked really good on him. I liked his belt buckle, too, and his hands. Everyone else was hugging him; I wanted to, but thought I shouldn’t. I wanted to be friends with him, but didn’t think he’d care to hang around with a kid. Trying to think of something clever, I told him brightly, “We’ve got the same name.” He smiled and said, “How about that?” Then he mussed my hair with his hand, and I really liked the way his fingers felt on my head. I’m usually fussy about my hair—but I didn’t straighten it out for a while.